Sir Alistair Spalding on turning a London wasteland into a cultural destination
How do you make a cultural district out of a dumping ground for fridges? Ask the artistic director of Sadler’s Wells theatre in London
Sir Alistair Spalding, artistic director and co-CEO of Sadler’s Wells in London, is not a man blighted by pessimism or narrow vision.
When he was appointed in 2004, Sadler’s Wells – “stranded and unloved”, as one of the London newspapers put it – was considered a theatre that merely hosted visiting companies. Spalding decided it should become its own creative force.
In 2013, Spalding, frustrated by having only a 1,500-seat theatre and a 200-seat studio, announced at a press conference that Sadler’s Wells was going to build a mid-size space. The fact that he had neither money nor a site was, apparently, no deterrent.
Shortly afterwards, he was rung up by the London Legacy Development Corporation, which was in charge of regenerating the deprived area in east London where the Olympics had taken place the previous year.
Originally, plans had been confined to housing and sporting venues. But Boris Johnson, then London’s mayor, wanted to create a cultural and educational district within the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Johnson enjoyed referring to this as Olympicopolis.